Thursday, April 14, 2016

The many deaths of Andrew Loku: Coroner to hold public inquiry into fatal police shooting

Andrew Loku died in a hallway, a real physical space, with walls and a floor, and lighting that’s dim, even on a bright day. It happened just after midnight, last July. He had a hammer in his hand; a policeman shot him twice. That much we know for sure.

But everything else about Loku’s death — nine months and one long investigation later — remains not just in dispute, but in something close to open revolt. There are different stories about the moments before he died. They are radically different, so different, in fact, they cannot co-exist and all be true.

On Wednesday, Ontario’s regional coroner for the Toronto area announced he would try, on some level, to reconcile those differing tales. Just less than a month after Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) ruled out charges in Loku’s case, a decision that sparked weeks of public protest, the coroner said he would hold a public inquiry into the shooting.

But his office will face an almost ontological problem as it tries to find out the truth about Loku’s death. (more...)